Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Met Police (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador, Hans Crescent, SW1 on a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates' Court on 29 June 2012, for failing to surrender to the court.

The MPS had a duty to execute the warrant, on behalf of Westminster Magistrates' Court, and was invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum.

He has been taken into custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as is possible.

This was inevitable.

Ecuador has a new government that asked to receive a loan from the International Monetary Fund. The U.S. conditioned its agreement to the loan on the lifting of the asylum for Assange which the previous Ecuadorian government had granted to him.

After some legal hustle in the Britain, which will take time, Assange will likely be extradited to the United States where the Justice Department holds at least one warrant against him.

Wikileaks was the media outlet for several embarrassing leaks of secret U.S. government papers. It is unclear for which of these publications the Justice Department will indict him.

But the case against Assange is not about justice. His publication of state secrets was obviously an act of journalism and free speech. But the deep state was embarrassed and demands revenge.

The best Assange can hope for, after the judicial process ran its course, is a pardon by the president of the United States.

Not sure if it's the same Wikileaks employee, but I read in one of the articles I researched that apparently a Wikileaks employee went before the Grand Jury when Manning refused to testify against Wikileaks. Gotta retrace my research.

A dark day for the so called Western democracies. This happens a few weeks after Manning was imprisoned and put in solitary confinement again. Political prisoners are taken and state leaders who are not submissive enough are harassed in the most massive way, while fascist presidents - for example in the Philippines and Brazil - remain untouched and allowed to murder at free will. Those who, like Assange, want to illuminate the dark corners of the morally untouchables are criminalized. We're back in the thirties.

It is time for Corbyn to grow a pair. He has been caving in all sorts of issues.

He is not likely to get elected anyway. Too many of his working clas voters outside London now realise that he has abandoned his former Euroskeptic position and his commitment to respect the results of the referendum.

Your pretty outrageous accusations remind me of all those liberal apologists for Barack Obama who jsutified his droning and his military aggressions.

Wonder what the empire has in store for tomorrow?
Arrests,Sanctions,Threats,Embargoes,dronings,tariffs,
provoking other countries.
Tearing up trade agreements, tearing up treaties, breaking promises-- giving stuff away that doesn't belong to us, attacking infrastructure of countries, an endless list of negativity and nastiness.

What else? A comment of mine currently in limbo on the Open Thread references a new story at the Saker site. Seems NATO may be planning a genuine military attack on the Russians in the Black Sea. The Deep State may not own Trump much longer, so they may be wanting to squeeze as much out of him as they possibly can in the time remaining.

Donald J. Trump via Twitter
@realDonaldTrump
Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!

January 26, 2017[216]

In February 2019, Chelsea Manning was hauled before a secret grand jury after being illegally surveilled by Trump's Justice Department and arrested in early March 2019 for refusing to give up Assange and subjected to a month of solitary confinement that is considered torture by the U.N.

She is still in PRISON despite being freed in 2017 in a commuted sentence for refusing to cower to fascism. She is a true heroine. No one would subject themselves to further torture having suffered it previously.

What is also vomiting ++ disgusting ++ is that, ex. the MSM Guardian wanted to get into the ‘new’ sexy etc. journalism with news / articles based on intel from Assange and other info leaks / sources / dispatches, and then after being warned and raided etc. bashed, they automatically, subserviently, turned against Assange and published a ton of lies about him.

Yet ppl continue to buy the Guardian, to read it online, it remains as some kind of idk leftish? respectable news outlet? aiiieee…

And Greenwald was just a ‘winner’ in the ‘new journos’ scene, eff him.

What is to be done now to defend / help Assange ? Screaming about injustice is good but overturning it is better.

There are many cultists on this site, but the Assange cultists are the worst. Assange was the agent of a proto fascist state, Russia, to undermine democracy. That is fascist behavior. Anyone on the left should abhor what he did. Not celebrate it.

So next time you look at a mirror, understand you are viewing a cult member who is defending "the agent of a proto fascist state, Russia, to undermine democracy".

A British talking head has just appeared on ABC.net.au's The World praising Ecuador's 'courage' because "nobody should be allowed to escape accountability for his crimes" (except war criminals such as Tony Bliar et al?)

As a US citizen I loath the mendacity and actions of the elites that have left us with nothing to hope for or believe in for some decent future with the US striding across the world sowing fear, hatred, and war. The reality of the depraved elites is such that I am usually right to first assume they are lying whatever they say. This all applies to the UK as well.

Julian has become a sort of family member for me at least. I found today's events shocking.

I have a feeling the Brits are going to treat him well before he is bundled into a crate and shipped off. They will provide good food, medical attention and fresh air in order to then be able to say, “Look how much better he looks than when he was in the embassy.” This will quieten the voices of all except the diehards. Remember how well Yulia Skripal looked after the Novichok episode and before she was disappeared.

Peter. A little WikiLeaks homework needed. WikiLeaks is a publisher not a printing factory. Documents are vetted both by them and publishing partners.
No need for fear of reprisals if those who committed the tens of thousands of crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity exposed in the published documents/videos, faced justice.
Instead of paying for their crimes, they are going to be sitting in judgement. This should upset you, upset us all. No monarch ever had more power. No subjects less.
The greatest crime of all, one that encompasses all the others, is the invasion of Iraq. Aggressive war justified by lies and liars, not one of whom have been held to account.
Our greatest hope is that crimes like these have no statute of limitations and may yet be prosecuted anywhere by anyone.
Our greatest nightmare is that all those who have the courage to speak truth to power are punished, abused and silenced.

The WMD thing is a red herring. Lots of countries have WMD's with the US far out in front of all the rest.
Same with the "Humanitarian" BS.
All just magician's tricks to make us look the other way.
What possible difference would it have made if Iraq had some chemical weapons? Would that have justified the destruction of Iraq?

This is a day of infamy. A hero is falling in the hands of his enemies. I feel sad, very sad and ashamed. If justice had a meaning in that story, Assange would be busy receiving a Nobel Price of Peace or anything better.

I feel ashamed. I did not speak up in his favor. I did make a mistake.

thanks b... it's unfortunate but a continuation in the same track... the 2 warmongers - usa-uk - tied at the hip, never saw anything ugly that they couldn't fully support.. they say the opposite, but since there is no accountability, they can be as hypocritical as they want and the msm will be the last to challenge them...

meanwhile, the imf has a star role to play here as the deal for money to equador included this little perk for the warmongers - kick assange out of the equador embassy.. alright.. money is god the world today, with star participants - usa-uk, always willing to bask in the waning glow of the empire glory days.. it is coming to an end and it can't come soon enough for the world... whether it is financial, climate, or some type of major collapse - it is definitely on track to happen.. this lack of accountability for the war crimes will come to an end at some point... meanwhile going after the whistleblowers is the act of a system that is clearly fucked up..

I seriously doubt Wikileaks would be so careless as to entrust one single human with the DMS.
I'm thinking though, that as a pretty open organization, they might be vulnerable to infiltration, who would have had up to seven years to come up with a protocol to protect the establishment line. Watch for new or recent missing individuals. My guess is there is a rat...

I can't help thinking that another 7 years of confinement in the embassy would not help either. But it is still high time to release some "Monsanto files", as one of the biggest ongoing scandal. A good idea of how deep South American govs are deep into poisoning their own people (+ getting them paid for the hospitals) in order to satisfy the need of Big Science to do some live and big scale experimentation can be gathered here
in this argentinian moviehttps://m.imdb.com/title/tt7962890/

"The only thing you defend is Zionism and it's cabal trying to take Corbyn down."

Eh? A lot of assumptions there just because I criticise him. I'm fully aware of the anti-Semitism smears used against him and his allies as it's so transparent and I'm also against what the Israelis are up to.

As it happens he has finally broken silence and is opposing Assange's extradition albeit tamely.

"This is a real test for the American media. Can they separate their personals feelings toward Assange from the question of whether it is okay to prosecute a publisher for publishing? Matt is right, this is extremely dangerous."

The above was made in reply to Matthew Yglesias who clearly hates Assange:

"Assange sucks but prosecuting publishers seems extremely dangerous and troubling to me." And he calls himself a journalist. He has as much honor as Moreno. The resulting threads are educational and revelatory. Lots of very confused, screwed up minds showing few morals mixed in with a few good eggs.

Please see tweet for entire statement. As with other threads on this topic, the comments are educational and revelatory. It's rather amazing how many utterly weak minds are in positions of responsibility. Some have lapped up so much propaganda Koolaid that they're now delusional.

"The only thing you defend is Zionism and it's cabal trying to take Corbyn down."

In case you didn't notice, Corbyn has consistently collaborated with the Zionists attacking him by idiotically trying to appease them instead of launching a no-holds-barred counterattack. But anyone who's not retarded knows you can't appease that kind of aggressor, you can only fight back as hard as you can.

I hold encountered feelings with respect to Julian Assange, whom I consider a really dark character.

On the one hand, there are European activists out there who point out at him along with Snowden being Soros´ and CIA´s people, they also point at Assange former relations with Mossad, and it is true that around the Arab Spring and the beginnings of the Syrian war Wikileaks contributed to spread dirt about Assad and his familiy, thus, favouring the US coalition´s illegal intervention.

Then it was the strong support and activism by the same Julian Assange in favor of Catalonian independence movement, whom the same European activists include amongst the wider "deep state" project on the "Federalization of Europe" ( strongly promoted by the European Liberal Group leaded by Guy Verhofstadt and the Club of Rome ), which is, the end of the nation-states and their dinamitation into little Euro-regions linked by ethnic/language/proximity matters, but not by a common ancient history as thye are current European states, so as to be more easily manipulable/pressed/attacked.... ( Just the same project they were intending with the Middle East, btw ).

These European activists suggest a relation between the arrest of Julian Assange and the call for a new referendum to reverse Brexit...Which could explain the reservations by Jeremy Corbyn on this issue.....But some others are pointing out at this being the event which will be used to justify the closing of free access to internet...Related to this play in favour the fact that Julian Assange is also an Ecuadorian citizen and nonetheless has been ousted from the Ecuadorian Embassy, which is to say that nobody is safe anywhere, anymore....A warning to real internet activists?

Added to the above mentioned, another issue I have against Julian Assange and keep me from supporting him is the strong support he gave to the Trump election campaign, which the known results for the world with respect to the current intenrational disorder, rampant breaking of international law and spreading, financing of fascism in LatinAmerica and Europe. Nevermind The Donald now seems to deny him like the Judas at the service of the "deep state" he is...This is all theater, remember...

But, on the other hand, Wikileaks and Assange have unveiled some interesting information about the exsitence of the "surveillance state" the excesses of the US Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistán, including the assasination of Spanish journalist José Couso, as well as the US pressing on the Spanish government to bury the case against some US marines...

Thus, encountered feelings for me....Tending more to distrust, I must honestly say...

What if Wikileaks and Assange are part of a deep intelligence operation and have leaked all this not for us to be more free, but with the same purpose their so supported The Donald has arrived to power, to destroy the trust of the people in the state and institutions, so as to descompose the whole world as we know it and reorganize it with according to another patterns which benefit more the elites in the current state of affairs?

AOC on Assange only went as far as retweeting this: "This is a real test for the American media. Can they separate their personals feelings toward Assange from the question of whether it is okay to prosecute a publisher for publishing? Matt is right, this is extremely dangerous."

That's already classic AOC, after just a few months in office. She's another one who's already reached the level of her incompetence.

Translation: the most obvious sentence one could pass over total disgrace the world media has become can be seen in the fact that nobody was here to film the arrest of Julian Assange, only us (RT). That in spite of the fact that everybody already {k}new that he would be expelled. Now they have to come and ask for our footage. CNN and The Guardian have the gall to call us and ask how it is that we were the only ones to get this footage. It’s obvious: you are just the spineless hypocritical servants of your Establishment and not journalists at all. This is why such a thing happened.

But, it seems that in the end the penalty for Assange will be not such severe...Well, a direct pardon from The Donald would sound too skeaky in certain already suspicious ears...

The Department of Justice of the United States has published the charges of conspiracy and hacking against Assange, it would be a maximum penalty of 5 years without the possibility of the death penalty.

The day is still young, and the competition is stiff. That said, most hostile commenters repeat the same few points, as if every poorly maintained bridge in "those several state" had a troll who would brave the daylight on a rare occasion to spew as if he/she were programmed. Sasha seems to feel that revelations spread by Wikileaks show that you cannot believe anyone, so he does not trust Assange. Whatever it means. Cretins never tell the truth, said cretin (famous Cretin Paradox).

Sasha seems to feel that revelations spread by Wikileaks show that you cannot believe anyone, so he does not trust Assange.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 11, 2019 4:51:31 PM | 159

No, do not twist my words, I have pointed out some possibilities that pass through my head, possibilities of which I, along with some others, have not facts to support, but, mainly, as I have clearly posted, I do not trust Assange because of his strong support for the Syrian invasion whihc was another step on the dinamitation of the Middle East, the rise to power of a fascist like Trump, whihc is supporting every fascist outlet in Europe, and the strong support for Catalonian independence movement for the dinamitation of Europe into tiny Euro-regions to the major glory of the US and its looting wishes....

"Totally outrageous: The House Foreign Affairs Committee is publicly smearing a journalist who is a US citizen while simultaneously defending the far-right Trump administration's attempt to imprison another journalist who is not a US citizen."

I'm reminded of the theatre-dream sequence in Steppenwolf, the lawyers tap dance from the musical Chicago, and the Broadway version of Cabaret all scrambled together and backed by Marcus Miller's bass riffs from Miles Davis's Fat Time--Yes, very unworldly yet actually containing its own logic.

Take your own conclusion, I have not yet taken my own, I have just collected a myriad of what is said amongst left activist I usually follow out there for you to consider, although certain moves by Assange incline so far to a certain side, as I have told to Piotr Berman.

Anyway, I am starting to feel like in around the US election campaign, and I will be measuring the intensity of the attacks on me for pointing out this into consideration and holding myself legitimate doubts about Assange as to directly related to the possibility that those alleged claims could be really true.

Everyone should make a donation to Tulsi Gabbard's campaign even if it's small so she qualifies to participate in ALL the Democratic debates. If she is underfunded at any time along the way she will be excluded from the debates and her views are too indispensable to shaming some of those candidates. Buttigieg is a Zio stooge and spoiler rising in the polls for a no-good reason.

Instead of namecalling and insulting those who do not agree with your line on Assange, why do not you try to explain why do you think Assange supported the invasion and destrcution of Syria, and the rest of the points, for that matter, on which I, and others, have doubts about him?

I would be much interested on how do you explain Assange´s strong support for the Independence of Catalonia....

Reactions in world media. Being linguistically challenged I could not check a lot. In RT, 15 stories on Assange, only two other news, Israeli landing on the Moon (crash and the lunar vehicle out of commission). 2.5-10 million Euro brazenly robed on the international airport of Albania. Polish portal WP, motto "All that's important", they have the Israeli story, nothing about Albania and Assange -- did they started to check news from letter B?

The biggest story is about NATO storage base that is being built in central-western Poland, much to dismay of people living in vicinity. American drive trucks trampling fences and ignoring the only traffic light in the village, they connected to the local canalization and doubled the number of users, leading to overflows, chop trees like madmen in a protected areas, grumpy locals punch their faces when they drink beer.

Tulsi is "in" as of last night. Regarding Mayor Pete, there is no mystery about his climbing in the polls. He is getting lots and lots of favorable treatment by the Corporate/Zionist Dems. I'll give the man credit for one thing - he is not the least bit ashamed about his ass-kissing of the apartheid Zionist state. Several of the others are just as devout, but they're hiding their love from public display.

Odd thing, but suddenly I remember how John McCain came out of nowhere back in 2008. Polling in single digits, suddenly the man is hyped like hell and becomes the candidate. Perfect foil for Obama, I suppose. Somehow reminds me of 2016, but then Obama was an unknown, not the most hated politician in the US.

^^^

As for "why now" on the arrest of Assange, it diverts attention from a lot of other topics. Some of those will probably never re-surface.

I'm pessimistic about the prospect of Assange's legal team prevailing in any court in its attempts to prevent (or even delay) Assange's continuing incarceration and extradition-- no surprise there, I guess.

I wish I were more sanguine, but I expect the legal motions on Assange's behalf to fall like dominoes. Assange's lawyers will do their damndest, and then a judge will solemnly read them the Riot Act-- in the UK, they will employ their signature authoritarian Posh Tone in denouncing Assange as a notorious criminal and wanton flouter of the Rule of Law.

(I wrote the previous sentence before seeing the report of the judge in Assange's bail-violation hearing doing exactly that; it didn't exactly take psychic powers to see it coming, I admit.)

I just can't imagine any jurist in this international kangaroo court putting a spanner in the works.

Webster Thayer, a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, was the trial judge in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. After the original conviction, when Thayer denied motions for a new trial, he told a Massachusetts lawyer: "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day? I guess that will hold them for a while! Let them go to the Supreme Court now and see what they can get out of them!"

This is exactly the level of judicial consideration and "fundamental fairness" that will be meted out to Assange. And although I truly hope I'm proved wrong, I don't think general public blowback will be quantitatively or qualitatively sufficient to deter the vicious powers and principalities from doing their worst.

To those posting about Glenn Greenwald; I don't know what Greenwald really stands for any more and no longer read his stuff, but you might be interested in this pathetic and predictable end to the Greenwald/Omidyar conservatorship of the Snowden documents. A month ago, Greenwald announced via twitter that The Intercept/First Look was now officially shutting down access to the Snowden archives and has laid off the group of employees that secured and curated the cache. (It cost First Look $400,000/year to maintain the files, which is 1.5% of its 2019 budget.) Greenwald did not even consult Snowden on this decision. So, without much fanfare, the cache is simply disappeared, without ever being fully opened to the public, although Greenwald claims in his tweet that he’s looking for the “right partner – an academic institution or research facility – that has the funds to robustly publish.” (Which, one might have supposed, would be the sort of funds that a news site such as The Intercept might enjoy given that they have the resources of their own billionaire founder behind them.)

They did not allow Poitras to attend the company meeting held on the subject after they made this announcement, and kept her in the dark until the announcement was rolled out. Poitras, recall, also has a copy of the archives and was one of the founding editors of Intercept. She is objecting to the move. Although given that the Intercept has merely sat on the cache for so long, it hardly matters now.

I thought from the beginning of the Intercept/First Look/Omidyar site that the eventual disappearance of the files was the very purpose behind Omidyar buying off Greenwald (and his valuable Snowden material along with him) in the first place.
Anyway, poof go the Snowden files, without most of the material ever being released to the public.

As bSirius suggested[80], this arrest is probably all for the benefit of Donald Trump's counterattack against his enemies in the "Deep State". The timing is ideal. With the confirmation of Attorney General Barr, the completion of the Mueller report and the announcement of the new investigation against the coup plotters, Assange is very useful. The main underpinnings of the "Russia" hoax were the Steele dossier and the DNC hacks. The dossier is now discredited. Assange can now discredit the DNC hack claim. He will exchange testimony for immunity or a pardon, and the anti deep state attack will be a slam dunk. The only concern is the the CIA will murder Assange first, and Trump will be blamed(how convenient).

I Concur with Sasha in my suspicion about Assange. He has not been critical of Israel, AFAIK.

IMHO, while I hold no grudges against LBGT people, I slept with one who was a fine individual whom I hold to this day in the highest regard.

Bradley Chelsea Manning is also a suspicious character in that the sex change which had soon coincided with the dissemination of the video of the murder of journalists by US Military aircraft personnel created a HUGE distraction. That distraction was HUGELY helpful in the dilution of the main story.

This is the way the CIA and its unholy alliance with the MiC, the Vatican and the MAfia operate.

In comparison to AOC, neither Ro Khanna or Ilhan Omar have yet to tweet anything about Assange. Likely response from Congress is few in support with most condemning which considering the source isn't at all surprising. Also, very few leaders of other nations had anything to say that I've seen, although admittedly I haven't gone out-of-my-way to look.

Quite a read to be sure, coming late to this party. Speculations abound,but, having read the bulk of the comments, I mostly agree with this take from ADKC @ 49;

" If Assange is handed over to the US then I would expect that he will disappear into the US prison for the rest of his life (which is what happens to those individuals who genuinely threaten the US system [at least those who are not assassinated])."

I own no crystal ball, so, we'll all see what transpires.

The rush around the globe to authoritarianism seems to be gathering steam. Things seem very dark at this point in history.

The malignant rich, and their minions( deep state), appear to be unstoppable.

@ The Headless Prophet with the posit that the CIA will murder Assange

I agree, unfortunately.
The elite of the West are in some sort of battle and Assange is the front for data that effects one or both of the factions. In any case, I don't see him making it to the point of trial. These folks don't give a hoot about any individual living or dying in case you all haven't noticed.

This is meant to deter other leakers as well so it would not surprise me if both sides are in on it to shut down more leaks of their perfidy.

I remember in 2006 Assange's attorney was pushed in front of a train and killed, at the same time the Wikileaks CEO died and another senior Wikileaks member was also killed.
At the same time I remember reading that the Dead Man's switch was activated but before it could complete its code, it was stopped.
Then I read the lead people on the Wikileaks website names were changed out.
I think Wikileaks publishing ability was taken over by the US at that time and now Julian is their final target. I will look for the links.

The real issue here is Lenin Moreno. How was it possible that the Vice President of Ecuador under President Rafael Correa became a traitor. My belief is that Moreno was always a CIA asset who infiltrated into the Government of Ecuador. Moreno is what Juan Guaido is to Venezuela. Before Moreno being Vice President, he represented Ecuador as UN Ambassador for the disabled (he is a paraplegic). It was at the UN in New York that he came to the attention of the CIA. As President Rafael Correa proclaimed that he was expelling the US military base in Manta, and following an independent foreign policy and a socialist orientation, the US took notice, and began to groom Lenin Moreno. This in conjunction with Julian Assange obtaining asylum form Rafael Correa....well the rest is history.

There's a federal election in Australia on May 18th which the (slightly) progressive Labor party is set to win after years of the dysfunctional Liberal austerity government that ignored calls for consular suppport .
It is possible the new government would repatriate Assange to Australia.

Those of you silly enough to believe Assange is your champion deserve him as such. His arrest marks the end of one phase and the begining of another in the project for permanently silencing all dissent in Oceana + the Zombie Zionist Satrapy Continuum. Power will speak and you will say nothing so STFU or else come up with a rationalization which allows you to live with the new normal now slouching towards Bethlehem.

Fact is your opinions don't mean shit because the entirety of your epistemological existense is invented so by all means form a new line of defense if your are so inclined but it won't make a difference because you understand neither yourself nor your enemy. I will not stand beside you because I know you are already infected with a variation of the Chosenite disease and so you will lose every battle and to reiterate the most important point: you will never know anything since all your information comes from a perfectly controlled media teet plus assorted alternate mind control systems you've SOMEHOW failed to detect.

I will never get past Assange's advice on 9/11 and the contradiction between his apparent denial of it's importance and his supposed dedication to Truth. Jounalism? WTF is that but an invented ideology and sales pitch for more advertiser bullshit. Assange has been controlled opposition since day 1 and I don't know how anyone has missed it given his introduction via Greenwald and Salon/Intercept which I carefully observed over several years when I still believed independent and/or well meaning actors could speak.

Bwah!

The arrest of Assange signals the begining of the next phase of the project to implant the idea that Globalists/Technocrats and Spies have immunity in all matters. You will gladly accept it because Bourgeois wannabes believe they have champions and can build barricades around their communes to save themselves at least. All so-called 'Deep States' have now come together including the Russians and Chinese because Globalists will always have more in common with each other as opposed to the rabble they unite to exploit.

Circe,
I agree with you. Most know what the machine is capable of if you step on their toes.
Assange or Seth Rich or even Dr. Jill Stein are prime examples.
Corbyn wants to change the system in the system, not start a revolution.

There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive reporting of Assange’s fate.

And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn’t care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today’s kidnapping of Assange.

They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don’t care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don’t want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.

In fact it seems to me the reason he is being changed with conspiracy is so that they can avoid defence claims that his publishing information is covered by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. Any worthwhile lawyer would paste it on thick for the jury that convicting Assange for publication would be a deep betrayal of their much beloved Constitution. It also means that the information on war crimes in the famous video would be once more broadcast to the world, and more importantly to the jury. Imagine what a fiasco and embarrassment US Govt would face if after all the fuss, Assange was acquitted by a US Jury?

Furthermore,in common law countries, such as the UK, a typical court condition of agreement to extradite is that the accused will only be charged with crimes exhibited in the extradition warrant. That being the case, the maximum sentence he would face is 5 and a half years I believe.

Lots of fat and gristle in the meat. I see Ro Khanna has combined an announcement with his statement that shows he's delusional about Wikileaks involvement in Russiagate:

"Tonight on @HardballChris I will argue that the over-broad indictment of Assange is a chilling suppression of speech. The indictiment criminalizes journalists asking a source for info or deleting chat logs. I detest that Assange helped Trump. But this violates the 1st Amendment."

"If you are a Beltway pundit or politician using your platform to celebrate Julian Assange's arrest today, then your ability to do so derives precisely from your lacking of the courage he has. You wouldn't be in your powerful position if you actually took a position against power."

I heartedly endorse these sentiments that unfortunately can't be copy/pasted here, so you'll need to click the link.

The only people defending Trump at this stage are imbeciles and Russians...living on STOLEN PROPERTY in the WEST BANK and sending their sewage to the ghettoized Palestinian refugee camp below, and any genius conspirateur still supporting Trump at this stage is in either of those two groups.

There are two ways of looking at the judge describing Assange as "narcissistic". Either he's an establishment lick-spittle willing to take it in the arse from the British establishment/government or he decided to fuck over the British government by showing such a high degree of prejudice that the outcome of the hearing gets thrown out by a higher court. Also, I doubt the judge had a valid psychiatric report to base his comment on. Remember, this case could go as far as the ECHR.

Meanwhile if you look at the indictment, it's basically that Assange encouraged Manning to dig further for stuff and that's about it.

I doubt a member of Congress claiming that the USA now owns Assange helps the case of extradition at all, which suggests that some American politicians still support slavery which is hardly surprising given their support for the overthrow of Gaddafi which resulted in slave markets being reintroduced in Libya. After all, most Brits including Conservative descendants of slave-owning ones (like David Cameron) are proud of the effort the Royal Navy is supposed to have put into suppressing the Atlantic slave trade, so.

Even I, a die-hard anti-Zionist, understands one thing: the TRUTH must emerge even from an imperfect vehicle, like Assange.

More importantly, if you don't have anything honorable to write about a person like Manning who suffered so much to expose the truth, please don't write anything at all about her and especially unprovable, unsupported garbage conspiracy.

Some posters here criticise Asssange/Wikileaks for not being critical of Israel or supporting Catalonia independence but the Wikileaks website isn't really like that.

Wikileaks is a non-redacted searchable database of documents that have been leaked. Most of these documents are dry and it really depends on what you a looking for and what you find. It is rare to find a single document that by itself clearly reveals a scandal or a plot of some sort. Also, there is no editorial from Wikileaks. It is up to the user to search, find and interpret.

For instance, I just did a search and found a US cable dated 30th Jan 2008 which describes Erdogan's concerns about an armed deep state extra-legal grouping which has a suspected overlap with a cold war Gladio group and which is protected by the Turkish judiciary. So, obviously, subversion was an issue long before the attempted coup in 2016, but it's up to me to make a story out of it.

There is plenty of stuff about Israel, for instance there seems to be quite a number of incidents concerning Obama and/or Clinton trying to get Netanyahu to apologise for something that matters very little and Netanyahu invariable refusing.

The easiest way for a body, such as the CIA, to manipulate Wikileaks is just be selective about what information is leaked.

If you're looking for dirt on Israel, Clinton, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Catalonia, etc. just go and look for it.

One thing's proved certain from what I've read on numerous twitter threads--the effectiveness of the Russiagate narrative at polluting many weak minds that turned them into Assange haters for that reason alone. Forget the fact that he revealed massive fraud and illegalities that revealed the true Hillary Clinton and the true nature of the D Party--fraud and illegalities including the compromising of National Security that have yet to be prosecuted. Obama had the Banksters; Trump has HRC and the D Party. Both are guilty of obstructing justice by protecting them from the consequences of their illegal behaviors.

Although Orwell used the date 1984 for the title of his book, he didn't actually specify when the societies he described would appear. From recent developments, the blocs he described can be seen taking shape, particularly with the EU-China Summit outcome. And the technics of control are coming into place as is the proper conditioning--atomization--of society in the Oceania/AirStrip One bloc. The nuclear confrontation will occur over Iran, after which it will be agreed to use only conventional munitions as Oceania will be gravely damaged. Improbable are the whisperings I hear from the gallery. No, not when you have crazed psycho neocon zero-sum cult of Mammon worshipers who will never accept the fate of becoming Losers armed to the teeth with Nukes. Do take note that they're deeply ensconced within the Duopoly, and as mentioned above have no qualms about who and how many they kill to attain their goal. No, Assange is not Goldstein, but IMO it's easy to see how he might have become such a figure.

How to stop the slide into such a Dystopia? IMO, the key resides in disempowering Oceania, which is the Outlaw US Empire. And of course, the main question is how?

Of course that's completely untrue. The video was released on 5th April 2010 and Bradley Manning was arrested on 27th May 2010. It was on the 22nd August 2013 (over 3 years later) that Bradley announced that he would like to live as a woman and that henceforth she would be known as Chelsea.

Furthermore,in common law countries, such as the UK, a typical court condition of agreement to extradite is that the accused will only be charged with crimes exhibited in the extradition warrant. That being the case, the maximum sentence he would face is 5 and a half years I believe.

Since when has the U.S. cared about legalities in other countries? The charges they have yet to include might not pass the U.K. threshold, but Assange is the perfect specimen for disproportionate American revenge-motivated, punish to deter justice.

The Trump Administration is right now denying visas to the ICC and threatens to impose SANCTIONS on the ICC and it's members and anyone investigating the U.S. OR Israel for war crimes and the REAL Donald Trump is virulently opposed to U.S. membership in the ICC. The U.S. doesn't give a damn about anyone else's justice.

Sweden has now reopened the rape case against Assange. Seems likely that UK could send Assange to Sweden instead. Sweden then might say that they will prosecute before considering an extradition request. That could mean years of detention (pre-trial, trial, post-trial, etc.) in Sweden before being sent to USA on whatever charges.

Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, held that same office under G.H.W. Bush. Once, during that earlier administration, at an interdepartmental meeting of the U.S. federal government that concerned how to deal with a criminal then in a foreign country, Barr supported the U.S. kidnapping the criminal, which would have been against the law of the foreign country as well as international law, by saying, "F### international law!" I was told this by someone who was at the meeting. This is the top lawyer of the U.S., who is now deciding how to deal with Assange.